Mental Health offers 'Prescription' for healing

Updated 10:10 pm, Thursday, July 25, 2013

A local band called Mental Health, has released a second album titled "Prescription."

A local band called Mental Health, has released a second album titled "Prescription."

Photo: Contributed Photo

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Members of the band âÄúMental HealthâÄôâÄô are from left to right : Mick Addiego, electrical guitar; Scott Roland, seated with beard, drummer, Tony DeCamillo, behind, bass; Richard Madwid, lead vocals, acoustic and bass electric guitar, and John Francese, backup vocals and keyboard.

On stage at the Redding Roadhouse the night of Dec. 14, Richard Madwid, of Bethel, a psychotherapist and founder and lead singer/songwriter of the rock band Mental Health, and his bandmates looked for solace in music.

The shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown that morning -- a gunman killed his mother then shot his way inside the school, where he killed 20 first-graders and six faculty members before killing himself -- seemed to affect everyone.

"Our music has always been a vehicle to get me through times when I've been challenged. This is what we do for souls, so we figured we'd let the music take us somewhere else for two hours," said Madwid, 61, director of clinical services for Catholic Charities in Bridgeport who also has a private practice in Bethel. "But it was so sad."

Three months later, Mental Health released its second CD, "Prescription," a 12-song mix of cover tunes from The Rolling Stones and George Harrison.

The group's first CD, released in 2004, "Long, Long Time," features eight original tunes Madwid wrote when he was in college. He founded Mental Health with some childhood buddies in 1985.

More Information

Listen to the bandThe band Mental Health will perform at the Bethel summer festival from 6 to 8 p.m. Sunday. The band's CD can be purchased for $10 through the website mentalhealthband.com, which lists performance dates and places.

In recent months, Mental Health has performed at fundraisers for Newtown's first responders, some of whom Madwid has seen as patients. Catholic Charities is providing counseling assistance in Newtown, particularly at St. Rose of Lima Church, which includes numerous families of victims.

Madwid said the power of music is the ability to reach those in need of emotional healing through the rhythm and lyrics that "give us a break from life ... Music is for our soul. It's a healing vehicle."

Sitting in his living-room-style office off Greenwood Avenue on Thursday -- cushioned wicker chairs in a semicircle, a Godzilla plastic toy on a coffee table and the sign "Live Well, Love Much and Laugh Often" posted on a far wall -- Madwid said he discovered music's therapeutic benefits when he was 12 years old.

After he failed to get picked to play on a Little League team, the dejected boy was forced to find a new interest. His mother, Virginia, now deceased, gave him a guitar and a tabletop radio.

The cover of his band's new CD is a photograph of that radio, which he recently found hiding in his basement under a cover of cobwebs.

In his early 20s, Madwid dreamed of becoming a rock star. That changed with maturity, yet the yearning to sing, write songs and play the electric guitar never faded.